Resurrected Peavey Triumph 60

[Enzo]

Is your schematic a file from the factory? Or someone's scan? MY file shows R21 over 100k on the schematic. If yours was scanned or the file damaged or a copy of two smaller pages taped together, it could have knocked the 2 and one of the zeroes out of there. Look straight down from there to R63, R64 220k. Are those numbers and values correct on your copy? If there is a distorted strip on your print, it might affect those resistors as they are right in line vertically on the page.

I have attached my file so you may compare drawings.


This is all academic, as you already know it is 100k.

[Xenrelic]

Yes the clean is very nice. No surprise with that iron and voltage! I have a small collection of the classic Spraug PS 600v series. I bought this amp as a sleeper and the price was awesome. I may be poor etiquette to bring up another builder that favored these caps! That's my on going project with lots of interruptions ;-^) If you like the sound of Roben Ford's rigs, you know what I am talking about! I think with some changes as you suggest, this amp could be tamed a fair amount in that direction. I dig Peavey. I have resurrected a Deuce and a Classic VTX with the help of this forum. They are heavy duty!

I'll have to print the schematic to see where your changes go but I think I get the general drift. Thanks much. Jim

I really like the Sozo mustard caps too and the Mallory PVC caps were quite nice as well. Sprague/SBE 6PS tend to have better results for me in higher gain applications with 4 stages or more.

[wavetuner]

Is your schematic a file from the factory? Or someone's scan? MY file shows R21 over 100k on the schematic. If yours was scanned or the file damaged or a copy of two smaller pages taped together, it could have knocked the 2 and one of the zeroes out of there. Look straight down from there to R63, R64 220k. Are those numbers and values correct on your copy? If there is a distorted strip on your print, it might affect those resistors as they are right in line vertically on the page.

I have attached my file so you may compare drawings.


This is all academic, as you already know it is 100k.

Thanks Enzo, I'll delete the other schematic. Since my layouts are much darker, it may have been a clean scan with a fold there as you suggest and touched up.

[wavetuner]

Hi,

I made a few intuitive changes to the Triuph 120:

C20 (OD input) was changed from a ceramic .01/1Kv to a Mallory 150 .022/630v
C13 (frist stage out plate coupler) changed from ceramic .001, 1KV to a CDE PS .01/600v

C14 (frist stage Kr bypass 22uf was missing(clipped)) installed 4.7, 50v

Usuall:

CR1,Cr2 OD clipping or notch diodes shunted
Tone stack jumper clipped

The Filter electrolytics look ok for now, re hot glued and touched up solder joints. The tone stack all set at half way sounds pretty good with my EMG pickups. Good definition of both pickups in OD. Ear bleed sound gone - much smoother. Fairly quiet considering some plate components and cheap resitors.

Next to Do: Ultra is too much for me. I think after a rehersal, I will shunt the 1M drive pot with a 1M fixed resitor. The Pregain Crunch is way too sensitive now. I may go to a 100kL later. So far it is moving in the right direction I want sound wise. Next I may plug into some other speaker cabinets. This amp may be a sleeper with replacement of marginal at best key discreate componets. What a stange place to cut costs. It may be intersting to plug a quality Preamp into the power amp. I may add a "power amp in" at the pre out - (out/in) switched jacks.

Updates to follow if intrest is there.
Thanks Jim

[nashvillebill]

I'll update my thoughts on this amp, after all I started this thread many moons ago!

Reliability: Hard -wiring all the connections (getting rid of the crappy Molex connectors) helped, and I gigged with the amp a few times without further reliability issues. However, the amp is stil a bear to work on, even more so with all the connections hard-wired.

Sound: I tried a couple of different speakers, even went back to a Scorpion, and yes IMO it is shrill. But you know what bugged me even more? The mechanical rattle from the tubes! I hate that jingling rattle. And the background hiss never seemed to get better. I'm not sure if mine had C55 or C56, i recall a few components that were shown on the schematic that were not present on my boards. I did not observe any ultrasonic oscillations on the scope but maybe my scope did not go high enough, being only only 15 Mhz.

The clean sound, well its okay, I thought it was pretty good actually--until I got another Classic VTX and refurbished it, now THAT is a clean sound. The Classic VTX runs circles around this Triumph in all respects, except the Classic doesn't have the high-gain capability.

Bottom line, I wanted a 3 channel amp but the Triumph delivers Clean, Crunch, and Ultra. I wanted Clean, Blues, and Crunch.

So what am I gonna do? Trying to tweak components is not going to be fun, first because I hardwired the boards together but also after several changes so far, the traces are beginning to lift from the preamp tube board. And the jingling tubes is driving me nuts.

I am tempted to yank the power amp board out and put the 6L6 sockets directly on the chassis. Maybe even do that on the preamp side, and rebuild the preamp section like the London Power preamp version suggested in TUT.

[tedmich]

O-rings on the tubes sometimes help "jangle" or different tubes! Or a trampoline type set up like Morgan Jones

[nashvillebill]

I've tried O-rings without success.

Rubber shock mounts between the chassis and wood cab, like on the Ampeg V-4....I think THAT'S the ticket.

[tedmich]

really low density urethane, like the trade name sorbothane, is the cats ass for vibration dampening, I bought a sheet decades ago from Mcmaster carr and have been using it since. Its really tacky when clean and bonds well with cyanoacrylic super glue.

[Racing]

I'll update my thoughts on this amp, after all I started this thread many moons ago!

Reliability: Hard -wiring all the connections (getting rid of the crappy Molex connectors) helped, and I gigged with the amp a few times without further reliability issues. However, the amp is stil a bear to work on, even more so with all the connections hard-wired.

Sound: I tried a couple of different speakers, even went back to a Scorpion, and yes IMO it is shrill. But you know what bugged me even more? The mechanical rattle from the tubes! I hate that jingling rattle. And the background hiss never seemed to get better. I'm not sure if mine had C55 or C56, i recall a few components that were shown on the schematic that were not present on my boards. I did not observe any ultrasonic oscillations on the scope but maybe my scope did not go high enough, being only only 15 Mhz.

The clean sound, well its okay, I thought it was pretty good actually--until I got another Classic VTX and refurbished it, now THAT is a clean sound. The Classic VTX runs circles around this Triumph in all respects, except the Classic doesn't have the high-gain capability.

Bottom line, I wanted a 3 channel amp but the Triumph delivers Clean, Crunch, and Ultra. I wanted Clean, Blues, and Crunch.

So what am I gonna do? Trying to tweak components is not going to be fun, first because I hardwired the boards together but also after several changes so far, the traces are beginning to lift from the preamp tube board. And the jingling tubes is driving me nuts.

I am tempted to yank the power amp board out and put the 6L6 sockets directly on the chassis. Maybe even do that on the preamp side, and rebuild the preamp section like the London Power preamp version suggested in TUT.

I appreciate what you´re saying. Altho it´s been a while since i sold mine it did undergo some heavy-duty modification. IMO you´re quite correct on the various opinions as far as the Triumph,however all is not lost.
I opted to take a different route. Admitted i lowered the amount of distortion by fooling around with the voltage dividers between stages but the mod i pulled that came to pay the biggest divident for warming the sound up was that i swapped the cathode resistor values in a kind of "miny-moe" fashion. What´s more i also jumped a gainstage. That i did i guess could be debated,but the basic reason was to bring hiss down as best as i could.
Anyways.
I reset the cathode values to 4,7,/3,3k/2,7k/2,2k/1,5k. Cathode caps were also changed,and then to varying values between 4.7uF and 1uF-all depending on what i wanted out of a given gainstage. The 22uF boost setup...i for one at least really question with this amp.

Of course the diodes were deleted and the same goes for the tonestack mod.

Would i redo the entire thing today i might have played around with deleting some of the cathode caps all together and that way let the gainstage in Q add flavour but stand back as far as amplifying signal all that much. Ie;all depending on what given character you want to emphasize.
See,i agree. The Triumph carries an overwealth of gain basicaly to no avail from many aspects.

On my hunt for hiss,which these amps carries by the S load by now seing their age,i came to replace LOTS of resistors and TBH most of them could have been left in there.
Mine was a 60 and that brings that the screen resistors R89/91/94/96 were clumped together for one 2.2k ceramic(if memory serves me). When i replaced that hiss went down in a major way.

The speaker in turn is a downright joke. Replaced that with various speakers but never really struck home and thereby always using the Triumph through one of my 412 cabs.

Words in its own right but trying to describe tone and attitude of an amp over the net is kind of impossible really. So....the Triumph is long gone while my idea of what I like to use is not and i recently pulled a similar mod to an ill reputed amp of the same era. A Fender75. An amp that in highgain mode really turns distortion into mush IMO. What i try to strive for when playing around with modding amps is a midfocused guitarsound with lots of separation and "string" into the mix-as far as it´ll go anyway. The Fender75 in case is an amp modded approx the same way as the Triumph in Q and as such i guess the tone of it is kind of representative of what the Triumph became capable of too.
Major difference between the amps being that the Fender utilize an ultralinear powerstage.(Ie;it won´t fold as easy)

Axe in case is a PAF equipped -85 vintage Ibby AM-70. As i absolutely loath pedals of any sorts axe runs straight into the amp. Altho the clip is shot with a fairly budget DV cam i presume it at least gives you an idea. The imperative bit of the clip being to show how nicely it cleans up by use of the pots on the guitar. Axe is modded with 1000pF caps in series with a 100k resistor each for treble bleeds.

[J-75]

Please direct me to a newer Peavey Triumph thread on this site, if one exists.
That business aside, here's my Triumph 120 problem...

Upon acquiring this amp, I gave it a brief check and found the 3 voices behaved as expected using the foot switches.
After leaving it off a few weeks, I carried it upstairs, lit it up, and found the channel switching was not working - all I could get was a clean sound on all selections when I used the foot switches (the LED's were responding properly). I've got the schematic and PC layout drawings & test gear ready. I've pulled the chassis and examined the preamp board for suspect components, etc.

So, speaking to the experienced, where do I start? If info on the same symptom has already been discussed on this forum, please point me to it.

[Enzo]

Hi J-75, welcome to the forum.

Instead of tacking onto the end of an old thread, may I suggest you just start a new thread for your amp. That would make it easier for all to participate.


All switching is done from the footswitch. The switch common is ground. The LEDs have their own +27v power supply to the pedal. If the LEDs work ,but the relays do not, then look for missing voltage at the relays. Look at the schematic, each relay coil has a parallel diode, a convenient place to take a voltage check. Is ther +27v on each coil? If it is missing, look for maybe an open R57.

[Lawnmowerman]

I think I bought this same amp